New Books in Literature

A postman struggles to deliver the last letter on his last day of work. A prostitute elopes with the auto rickshaw driver who arranged clients for her. An inspector discovers the dead body of the boy he had an altercation with the previous evening. In Nocturne Pondicherry (Hachette India, 2024), Ari Gautier peels back the layers of human emotions until glimpses of greed, anger and lust can finally...

In Sara Johnson Allen's novel Down Here We Come Up (Black Lawrence Press 2023), Kate Jessup’s mother lures her back home to North Carolina. Jackie Jessup is a con-artist, always working a scheme, always taking what she wanted, and she taught Kate to do the same. Now she’s dying, and Kate is estranged and living far away in Boston. Kate, her mother, and a third woman, Maribel, have either alienated...

When evil stalks the land, who can you trust? Autumn 1314. In the aftermath of the Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, the villagers of Warcop wait desperately for the return of loved ones. When brothers Wat and Rob Dickinson bring news of the death of their companion, Adam Fothergill, as they fled home, there is no one to mourn him. But when a monstrous figure is seen in the hills near...

Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. A young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones, he can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him dur...

When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimensional no-man's-land that is populated by supernatural beings. From there, they go on to an alternate-future version of Philadelphia—a frightening dystopian nation-state in which citizens are numbered, not named. How will they escape? In The Heads of...

Anne Enright, writer, critic, Booker winner, kindly made time back in 2023 for Irish literature maven Paige Reynolds and for John Plotz in his role as host for our sister podcast, Novel Dialogue. In this conversation, she reads from The Wren, The Wren and says we don’t yet know if the web has become a space of exposure or of authority. We can be sure that the state of diffusion we all exist in is...

Today I talked to Scott Nadelson's novel Trust Me (Forest Avenue Press, 2024).  After his divorce, Lewis moves into the cabin he bought as a vacation home towards the end of his marriage. It’s in the foothills of the Cascade mountains, a forty-five-minute drive from his twelve-year-old daughter’s school and his tedious government job in Salem, Oregon. In fifty-two short stories that alternate betw...

Creation Lake (Scribner, 2024) is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. "Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and we...

Nicholas Molbert's Altars of Spine and Fraction (Curbstone Press/Northwestern UP, 2024) follows its protagonist through the joys and dangers of childhood on the rural Gulf Coast, through familial loss, and into adulthood. Refusing to romanticize what has been lost, Molbert instead interrogates how nostalgia is most often enjoyed by those with the privilege to reject or indulge it. Violent hurrican...

In this episode I'm joined by Dalkey Archive's editorial director, Chad W. Post. We discuss the republication of the late Marguerite Young's cult-classic work of fiction, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (Dalkey Archive Press, 2024). A colossal novel of over 1,000 pages, a kaleidoscopic cast of characters, permanent opium-induced hallucinations, a sprawling sense of scope, and a truly distinct and lyric...

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about publishing but were too afraid to ask. Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer’s Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book (Catapult, 2020) by Courtney Maum is a funny, candid guide about breaking into the marketplace. Cutting through the noise, dispelling rumors and remaining positive, Before and After the Book Deal answ...

Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, in June 1941, his wife and daughter left behind in China. Seven months later, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Hong Kong, and made Reeves the last remaining British diplomat for hundreds of miles, responsible for refugees streaming in from China....

The Booklover's Library (Hanover Square Press, 2024) has one of the most dramatic openings I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of novels. It’s 1931 in Nottingham, England, and seventeen-year-old Emma, ensconced in her father’s bookshop, is engrossed in her favorite novel, Jane Austen’s Emma, when she realizes the building around her has caught fire. With her father’s help, she stumbles into the st...

In her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process (Zibby Books, 2024), Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye. The stories--which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny--will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the por...

Zohara flies from New York to Israel for her mother’s funeral. She’d already been through a tough year; a divorce from her American husband and trouble getting started on her doctoral dissertation at NYU. As she clears out the house where she grew up, Zohara finds tapes of her mother singing Yemenite songs in Arabic, and evidence of a secret romance. During her first thirty days of mourning, Zohar...

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible--for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a "bridge" living with, assisting, and monitori...

Today I talked to Chelsea Biker about her novel Madwoman (Little, Brown, 2024). Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she's landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her n...

1999: An island off the southern coast of Greece. Art historian Elizabeth Clarke arrives with the intent to acquire a rare female sculpture. But what begins as a quest for a highly valued cultural artifact evolves into a trip that will force Elizabeth to contend with her career, her ambition, and her troubling history. Disoriented by jet lag, debilitating migraines, and a dependence on prescriptio...

Jake Lamar's novel Viper's Dream (Crooked Lane Books, 2023) is a gritty, daring look at the vibrant jazz scene of mid-century Harlem, and one man’s dreams of making it big and finding love in a world that wants to keep him down. Harlem, 1936. Clyde “The Viper” Morton boards a train from Alabama to Harlem to chase his dreams of being a jazz musician. When his talent fails him, he becomes caught up...

Maria de Caldas Antão speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her poem “ My Freedom,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Maria talks about how a casual comment inspired this poem, which explores the idea of freedom, and what it might mean to be free: personally, politically, physically, philosophically. Maria also discusses how she hears a sort of music when writing new poetry...

Climate change. The refugee crisis. The rise of social media. These big social questions—and others—inspired journalist Marga Ortigas in the creation of her new novel God’s Ashes (Penguin Southeast Asia, 2024) , a piece of speculative fiction set in a very different 2023. A transnational crime unites the book’s characters, rich and poor, on a journey throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islan...

Terena Elizabeth Bell's Tell Me What You See (Whisk(e)y Tit, 2022), is a collection of ten experimental short stories about coronavirus quarantines, climate change, the January 6th invasion on the US Capitol, and other events from 2020-2021. Written in both word and image, pieces from the collection have been called "​​inventive and topical and fresh, emotional, chaotic, and important" by The McNe...

In a flash of modern warfare (Ukraine? Afghanistan? Vietnam? Poland? Hiroshima? Israel? Gaza?), a mother loses her child. She becomes "A Trojan Woman," compelled to embody every iconic character in Euripides’ classic play. Sara Farrington (Playwright) NYC & NJ based playwright, screenwriter, co-founder of Foxy Films, her theater company w/ Reid Farrington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m...

Today’s spotlight is on the literary magazine The Threepenny Review. I’m joined by the magazine’s founding and current Editor, Wendy Lesser. Wendy Lesser is the author of twelve nonfiction books and one novel; her latest book, entitled Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery, came out from Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2020. She has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation...

Charles Holdefer's new short story collection, Ivan the Terrible Goes on a Family Picnic (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024) weaves together ten stories that connect through America's pastime. Did the Russians invent baseball? Is there a connection between Babe Ruth’s cross-dressing and Gertrude Stein’s secret mission to New York? What does history tell us about what lies beyond heaven? From the Americ...